Center E-News

Making Marriages Modern? Marital Choice, Metrical Books, and the Papereality of Social Reform in the Inner Kazakh Horde, 1852-1876Kimberly Powers, Ph.D. Candidate in History and Anthropology at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and a participant of the Summer Research Lab, gave the REEEC Noontime Scholars Lecture on July 1, 2014. In the second half of the 19th century, the administrators of the Russian Empire tried to regulate marriages among the Kazakhs of the inner horde (who populated a region between the Volga and Ural Rivers). The new regulations revealed the ambivalent stance on Kazakh women’s status, the differences between Orthodox Russian and Muslim Kazakh definitions of marriage, and the use of documentation to record marriages in order to prove their validity. [more][pdf]

The “Unknown” and the “Superfluous”: The Curious History of Tea in Seventeenth-Century MuscovyOn June 24, 2014, the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center presented a Noontime Scholars Lecture from one of its Summer Research Lab participants, Audra Yoder, a Ph.D. Candidate in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Entitled “The ‘Unknown’ and the ‘Superfluous': The Curious History of Tea in Seventeenth-Century Muscovy,” the lecture gave a historical overview of tea in Russia. According to Yoder, tea drinking is a fairly new tradition in Russian culture. [more][pdf]

2014 Fisher Fellow – Pey-Yi ChuThis year’s Fisher Fellow was Pey-Yi Chu, Assistant Professor of History at Pomona College in Claremont, California. While at SRL, Prof. Chu will work on research and writing for her book manuscript Permafrost Country: Science and Environment in Eastern Siberia, 1830s-1950s, which is about the history of frozen earth research and its connections to economic development in eastern Siberia. She will use the University of Illinois’ vast Slavic collections and the help of the Slavic Reference Service staff to “fill those gaps” in her knowledge and in the source base for her project. [more][pdf]

2014 SRL Reception On June 24, 2014, the Slavic Reference Service (SRS) and the International and Area Studies (IAS) Library graciously hosted a reception for Summer Research Lab (SRL) participants. Visiting scholars and researchers met with Illinois faculty and graduate students. John Wilkin, Dean of the University of Illinois Libraries, made special remarks. [more]

Everyday Life under Late Socialism: New Online High School and Community College CurriculumIn Spring 2013, the Institute of National Remembrance in Warsaw kindly donated three copies of its recently created Kolejka/Queue, an educational board game that tells the story of everyday life in Poland at the tail-end of the communist era. To help students gain critical understanding of daily life under socialism, REEEC has recently developed a set of curriculum guides for high school and community college instruction around this game. [more]

Breaking Stalin’s Nose: New Curriculum for Middle SchoolsTo provide insight into propaganda, political culture, citizenship and everyday life in the Soviet Union, the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center has recently developed a module for middle schools around Eugene Yelchin's novel Breaking Stalin's Nose. Building on the interactive website that accompanies the book, the lesson plan also invites students to consider issues around political participation and indoctrination more broadly. This module fulfills Common Core Standards ELA-LITERACY.RL. 6.1.- 6.2., ELA-LITERACY.RH.6-8.3 to 6-8.4, Illinois State Goals 14.c.3, 18.B.3a, and 18.B.3b. [more]

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